Sugar board in plan to cushion cane farmers
Kenya Sugar Board Chief Executive Officer Ms Rosemary Mkok displaying packages of impounded brown and white sugar. She said Sh500 million has been set aside to protect farmers. PHOTO/KNA
What you need to know:
- “The money will cater for 30 per cent of the cane delivered to the factories while the balance is to be paid once the product is sold,” she said.
Kenya Sugar Board has a new pay scheme to cushion farmers against losses resulting from delayed payment for cane delivered to millers.
Sugar board chief executive Rosemary Mkok said Sh500 million has been set aside to protect farmers.
The plan was introduced early this month and will be a shift from the previous one in which farmers were only paid after millers sold the sugar, Ms Mkok told the Nation.
“The money will cater for 30 per cent of the cane delivered to the factories while the balance is to be paid once the product is sold,” she said.
Farmers from western Kenya had early this year threatened to stop taking sugarcane to factories owing to payment arrears amounting to billions of shillings.
The secretary-general of the Kenya Sugarcane Growers Association, Mr Richard Ogendo, said illegal imports were also to blame for the farmers’ woes.
Ms Mkok said the current payment system used by factories deprived farmers of their profit because millers had taken up the responsibility of cane development and production with farmers left to bear the cost.
